XIN TANG (New China) - Pinyin.info

13 XIN TANG: NEW CHINAremaining characters in each of the titles. By thesingle-deck method, entries are arranged by the simpleprinciple of strict alphabetic order, without considerationof the head-characters. Only through the latter means canhomophonic words be assembled in one place. At present,however. the single- deck system is still thought to be tooalien for most Chinese familiar with characters.v. FROM NATIONAL STANDARD TO INTERNATIONALSTANDARDMany schemes for Chinese Romanization have beenproposed throughout history, but only two have receivedofficial status: National Language Romanization (1928) andPinyin (I 9S8). Now Pinyin is not only the national standardof mainland China but also the international standard forChinese transcription adopted in 1911 by the UnitedNations Conference for Standardizing Geographical Names,and in 1982 by the International Organization of Standardizations(lSO/TC 46).Is Pinyin Romanization a second Chinese writtenlanguage? Emphatical1y noll In China a clear distinction ismade between -Pinyin- (phonetic spelling) and ·PinyinWenzi- ( phonetic writing language). Pinyin has the legalstatus of being the official spelling system for specificand limited purposes, but is without the legal status ofbeing the official written language. This is similar toJapanese written all in kIml (so-called hoi. HQji) which isnot considered formal writing. Only a combination of kIniiand kInD. is considered to be the legal written language ofJapan and. in China, this status is reserved exclusively forcharacters alone.